Folks, unless your dumber than a bag of hammers, we are in a recession. The gubmint used ficticious inflation to get to positive growth for the last 2 Q's. What that means now? Who cares, but I had to point it out after Kudlow pulled his told ya so bullshit. The bogus #'s kept bush and ben from looking like fools, and therin lies the motive. http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/pdf/mwo050208.pdf
I didn't have time to read your link but GDP number stayed positive only because of the government spending. Remove the government spending and we are in a .....
actually GDP was positive cause inventories are building. The consumer spedning component was negative for the first time in years.
You have to read the link. "The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the Department of Commerce publishes the GDP statistics. They tell us the US economy grew by 0.6% in each of the last two quarters. They come by that number by taking the nominal or âcurrent dollarâ measure of the economy and subtracting their figure for inflation, which gives us âreal GDP,â or after-inflation GDP. Nominal GDP in the fourth quarter grew by 3%. In the first quarter it was 3.2%. They figure that inflation was 2.4% in the fourth quarter and 2.6% this quarter, giving us the slightly positive growth numbers." it goes on to show the gubmint ignored the favorite inflation #'s and used whatever it could to plug in for a positive.
Quiz: identify the economy of g-7 member, and when, which was saddled with huge debt to foreign sovereigns, saw its currency drop like a stone in part b/c of that debt, then enjoyed a rebound due in part to a boost (short lived) in exports caused by changed exchange rates, then cratered into hyperinflation and worse. Correct answerer moves on to bonus round.
No talking head can admit the economy is in a recession, everyone is talking about how rebate checks will stimulate the economy and most likely push GDP back to around 2%.